Easter Beach Bunnies

Yes, I know that Easter was over a week ago. However, I am excusing myself from total blog irresponsibility with the excuse that I had to recover from a camping trip, a taco party, and hosting a baby shower all in less than one week. I would also like to point out how "terribly early" Easter was this year. In fact, I'm going to congratulate myself for getting back to blogging so soon after such a trying couple of weeks. Take that, Rhonda!

Our Easter Landscape

Now on to the matter at hand: Easter. We had a lovely Easter Sunday (which also happened to be my birthday this year) camping at the beach in Ventura. We didn't really get into the whole Easter Bunny myth, but I did make an Easter basket for each of the girls. I really thought that Fiona wouldn't give two hoots about the whole Easter basket rigamarole, but she was absolutely thrilled to have her own basket, in which was some plastic bath toys, barrettes, a pink stuffed caterpillar, and a lollipop. She was enchanted. She hugged the pink caterpillar to her chest and cooed, "bahbah, bahbah," as she rocked it back and forth. Madeline was quite pleased with her booty as well, mostly girlie stuff and some mini markers. As to the true meaning of Easter, it seems she is starting to get it. We were walking down the beach and I pointed out the skeleton of a crab. She asked me why it wasn't moving, and I told her it was dead. She asked me if it was going to come back to life, and again I told her no, it was dead. She very matter of factly replied, "Hmmm no, but Jesus came back alive." She later retold the "parable:" "Jesus was dead, but now he's alive! But, crabs don't come back to life." Who needs a bunny when you've got the Easter Crab to teach your child what it's really all about?

You know they're either extremely happy or terrible upset when you see molars.

"This is SOOO cool!"

Mommy looks on in wonderment and awe.

Fi notes for the first time that Madeline also has a basket and becomes curious about what she can steal from it.

The next order of business was dyeing, hiding, and hunting eggs. We used the Paas dye, and it takes 4-ever for those tablets to dissolve, so Maddie kept asking me, "Mom, is the dye-arrea ready yet?" So funny. I hid the eggs down on the beach and among the rocks. Talia, Daniela, and Madeline made pretty short work of scaling the rocks and combing the beach to find the eggs. Pat and I believe that Madeline is never happier or has more fun than when she is with her cousins. There were some really great hiding places, like holes in the boulders that were the exact size of an egg. Fiona was less than thrilled about this part of the festivities, as she is now not only afraid of dogs, but also sand. I took some pics of the girls climbing up the rocks to camp to give some idea of the cliff we have to clamber up and down to get from camp to beach.

THE DYE

THE HUNT

And finally, a very tired Fi and the family sit down to Easter dinner.

Tom, Robyn: This one's for you